When I was in Maine over the summer, I ran into a bit of a predicament. I was getting the experience I came for -tranquility, dedicating myself to something greater than just me, natural beauty and its conservancy, the works- but as my time in Vacationland was coming to an end, an important date snuck up on me... my 21st birthday.
I worked at a summer camp in a town called Weld, a small hamlet in the mountainous backwoods of western Maine where less than 400 people live year-round. Being raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and considering I attend a state university known for partying, this was a bit of a culture shock. I got a lot of daily human interaction at this camp, and I’m sure spending my birthday there would have been amazing in its own right. However, my birthday just happened to fall on my final day off. The counselors that I was grouped with were split- half of them being over 21 and half of them being under 21- so finding something that we could all do for my 21st birthday would be a bit difficult due to the camp’s policy on underage consumption. We were cautious and didn’t want to test that, and the younger counselors in that group said that they could find something else to do on that day if the older counselors wanted to take me out to celebrate. So, that solved that problem.
But now we had the problem of figuring out what to do. We were a 45-minute drive from the nearest Walmart, and the nearest McDonald’s was ten minutes further. We needed to do some research, and we needed to do it fast. We only planned our day-off “itineraries” a few days before the actual day off throughout the summer. Being a fairly new counselor at this camp, my group and I asked around for some ideas. Someone brought up the idea of taking a trip to the coast- specifically, Monhegan Island.
Monhegan Island is off the coast of southern Maine. It takes an hour-long ferry ride to reach. This island hosts the small fishing village of Monhegan, which is home to 64 permanent residents. Since certain environmental regulations and laws need to be strictly followed, special permission is required to visit Monhegan.
Lucky enough for me and my group, the summer camp we were working at has deep connections with this island, as the camp has taken many trips to the island in the past (before COVID struck) to do community service and engage with the locals. Because of this, approval was easier to obtain, and we purchased ferry tickets for the day- leave port from Port Clyde at 11 am and leave port from Monhegan at 4:30 pm. Our trip was set.
Before we go down this road, just know that every picture in this article is a picture that either was taken by me or one of my friends on that day.
We left the camp at 7 am. I drove, as I had driven up to Maine and I had the biggest car of the four of us. Tyler and Devon, my friends from New Mexico, had the backseat. They wasted no time rolling joints- both for the rest of the drive and for the island excursion itself- while George (Chicago native) and I jammed out to Caamp in the front, occasionally entertaining a toke coming from the back seat. Once we got out of the winding roads of the mountains of western Maine, we got a chance to cruise over roads that passed through open, golden-green fields. Windows down, wind in our hair, sun in our eyes- the rest of the drive felt so open and free.
After a while, we started to catch glimpses of the Atlantic through the dusty windows of my car. Not too long after, we arrived at the Monhegan Ferry Line terminal in Port Clyde. After parking and checking in our backpacks, we navigated the dock to the ferry itself. An imposing, two-deck, white ferry was connected to the dock with ropes whose circumferences were larger than my wrist. Inside, we found a perfect spot to sit for the four of us, which was a wooden bench (which had cushions that doubled as life preservers) on the port side of the lower deck. George and I had noticed a little hutch on the outside of the hull with a railing on our way in, which we decided to move to before the boat had even left port. Once the boat got moving, the views we saw from this hutch were definitely worth the move. Watching the massive Atlantic waves crash against the bow of the boat from there was pretty entertaining, as the passengers who had chosen the seating on the bow of the boat were getting soaked every time the boat came crashing back down into the water from the top of a swell.
Monhegan. As we filed off the boat, we were greeted with the weathered faces of local men who were looking for peoples’ bags to take back to their trucks. Once those bags were on their trucks, they would earn their wages by driving those bags up to the Island Inn, the island’s hotel. We were not going there, so we were not lucky enough to have our bags shuttled around for us. We began walking up the road into town, passing locals and tourists alike. Flocks of people would become single file on the sides of the one-lane gravel roads every time a truck would pass through, but no one was bothered by it. It’s all a part of the experience here, and those truck drivers need to make a living.
Once we got a little past town, we arrived at our first stop- Monhegan Brewing Company. A quaint little cottage at the end of the main road leading into town is the brew house. The seating was outside and surrounded by three walls of empty lobster cages. Flight after flight of IPAs, stouts, and sours were brought to our table at the request of my friends. Of course, the reason we were there became no secret at all, and it had seemed to get around to the other tables. We started getting birthday flights coming in from them as well.
Once I was well and drunk, a man with possibly the most stereotypical sailor look came up to our table and asked if we would like to help him start up some bar songs. We sang with him for about an hour, and it was nothing short of magical.
After the brewing company, we hiked the south side of the island. We explored a shipwreck that was blasted up on the rocks and we were awed at the many cliffs, cubbies, and coves of the coast of the island. Once the trail we were following started leading us back toward port, we got great views of the village of Monhegan from the east side of the island.
We walked back through town and found a nice little beach in the port. We took a dip in the freezing water for a little while before George and I decided to break from Devon and Tyler to grab some food. We wanted to try a lobster roll before leaving, and our boat was slated to depart in about half an hour. We found a little shop in port to grab a lobster roll, but because the lobster rolls were extremely expensive, we settled on lobster bisques for each of us.
Crossed out of my mind and probably sun-sick at that point, we headed back to port. We hopped back on the ferry and picked a spot to stand towards the stern on the starboard side of the boat, upper deck. I found a nice little ledge to sit on where I could lean up against a large utility pipe. I immediately conked out. When I woke up, we were pulling into port in Port Clyde. With massive headaches (but sober again nonetheless), we piled back into my car. I put her in gear, and we wheeled away from an experience I won’t soon forget.
